![]() |
MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
2 Attachment(s)
Now updated!
--------------------- Well, after playing Dominions 3 for a time, I turned, as most people do, to the great homemade Usermods. After a time of playing these mods, I found something missing. A good insane nation and a good Vampire nation. So, well, I combined them. As a fan of the WhiteWolf Vamprie: Dark Ages and Vampire: The Masquerade Roleplaying Wolrds, I immediately thought of the insane Vampire Clan "The Malkavians". So I checked some of my books for some background information on the Malkavians, created some 2D sprites (most modified out of others created used in other mods), learnt how to make a mod for Dominions 3 and well scripted it together. I think it turned out rather well. :) Here the "official" description: "If you find yourself drowning in madness -- DIVE! This is the House of Malkav, the broken Mirror, the shattered Dream. Surrender your sanity and bow to the voices from Faerieland." "--Most Kindred cling to the familiar shores of sanity like drowning men. Though they know a constant, low-level madness from their slavery to the bloodlust, most Kindred usually resist it and fight off all other derangements. Some are eaten alive from within by the Beast; most grip their sanity with a miser's clutch. But some Kindred plunge in where the strongest elders fear to go, giving full vent to their demon desires and mad caprices. Some do it by choice, but the rest do it because they are forced to. The curse of Malkav has stolen their choice in the matter, and they can either agree to dive into madness, or be dragged under the murky waters by the chains of insanity.-- The House of Malkav is a nation ruled by Vampires. Through the curse of Malkav, the Antediluvian who sired the first Malkavian, all Vampires who belong to the House of Malkav are insane. Their minds are shattered even though they have gained frightful power in madness. " "Race: Thralls, Familiars, Ghouls and low level Malkavians. Military: strong but expensive infantry + some cheap Thralls, powerful yet insane Vamipres, strong summoning abillities . Magic: strong, only astral, blood and death magic. Priests: Strong but insane. Play with high turmoil/luck scale and 'the Elder' or the 'ninja wannabe' as pretender god." here a list of all the included units: units: 2540 thrall 2541 familiarsword 2542 familiarcrossbow 2543 familiarlance 2544 ghoul guardian 2545 ghoulassassin 2546 fledgeling 2547 neonate 2548 wereform 2549 Tzimisce Broodmother 2550 tzimisce Vozhd 2551 Tzimisce Szlachta 2552 lupin 2553 Faeriesprite 2554 Zombu 2555 Wraith 2556 War Ghoul commanders: 2580 crazed monster 2560 mad prophet 2561 mesmeric manipulator 2562 thefreak 2563 waking dreamer 2564 the awakened 2565 ravinglunatic 2566 ghoulsheriff 2567 Malkavian Elder 2568 big bad lupin 2569 big faerie heroes: 2572 dionysian 2574 rasputin 2575 vasantasena 2576 crazy jane 2577 malk content god: 2573 the elder 2582 the ninja wannabe So far so good, I hope you like playing this mod as much as I do. Feel free to commend on my work, for I am still open to suggestions. god bless, avarchillion PS: I, of course, used the #shatteredsoul tag to simulate insanity in my vampires. :) PPS: I forgot to mention, that this mod is fully playable. PPPS: Also important: I don't think this mod is compatible with other mods. PPPPS: Please forgive me my, sometimes bad english. I am German and therefore prone to misspell or misuse grammar now and then. UPDATE: I have updated my mod and put the new version (1.4 into this post. So please download the 1.4 version (it should be a lot more balanced). |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
2 Attachment(s)
Here an updated version (now 1.2) of my mod, with an additional pretender god "the Ninja-Wannabe" and a new spell to summon 10 Faeriesprites.
Also some balancing. Have fun. :) |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
Welcome to the community. This is your first post? Wow, that is a good way to start.
Ambitious first mod with lots of content. I will try it out when I have the time to. Good job just posting a complete mod nation! |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
Thank you!
I made most of this mod about a year ago. Took me about one week of coding, balancing and of course pixel painting, but I just loved doing it. I love being creative in that kind way. Of course balancing still needs some work. The Vampires are extremly strong, but I hope I have countered that via the shatteredsoul feat. At first I wanted to give them the #insane feat (but this was not possible, because it is hard-coded) so I had to switch to the shatteredsoul wich works suprisingly well with the nature of a Malkavian ("Open Tomb", "Mutter", "Mourn the Dead" ....). Well, I´m just glad I found a game where I had the chance to put some of the WhiteWolf Vampire stuff into. Maybe in future I will try to create some other Vampire-Clans as new nations Mods. avarchillion |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
You might want to post this mod over at the "other" forum:
http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/ There seems to be more responses to mods there and there are also several very experienced modders there that might give you good feedback/advice/tips. |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
1 Attachment(s)
Thanks, I´m going to take a look at that website. :)
well, after playing my mod again, I realized that there still were some balancing issues. So I re-balanced some stuff and there release the new version 1.2.2. There is no new content included, but a lot of re-balancing happened: - tweaked the heroes a bit - tweaked the blood drink weapon of the vampires. - reset some shatteredsoul stats - tweaked the regeneration abillity well, let me know what you think of the changes. god bless, avarchillion |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
1 Attachment(s)
I have been sick today and therefore had the time to check into my mod again.
Well, that let to some bigger changes in the mod and therefore I proudly present "The House of Malkav" 1.3. I added some new spells to summon all the vampires you could normally recruit. I did that, because the vampire nation is rather destructable to its own population and therefore will have falling income over time. As the vampires are expansive at a certain point in time you could not recruit army anymore. So well, now you also can summon them. avarchillion |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
1.2.2:
This is an outstandingly fun mod nation. One of my very most favorite, and I have played MANY. Very tough at first with the pretender and scales it is meant to be played with... (playing against Mushroom Kingdom on Impossible Aggressive + 7 other nations on Mighty Random) but there are a few issues. 1) The Elder cannot summon Big, Dumb, and Ugly. The blood slaves are used but no War Ghoul appears. 2) Waking Dreamers are UBER POWERFUL for their cost and /gemsummon, not to mention their research value, even with 30 Shattered Soul. 3) Maiandros is probably the most powerful being I have ever seen. I was lucky to get him and set him on the Koopa Kingdom early; he assassinated their Titan god several times while bringing their capitol to 100+ unrest. Then I used him as a raider, didn't even need any spells or items, or Immortality, he would frequently annihilate entire provinces of 150-250+ armies. 3) Mad Prophets are likewise overpowered with +4 Blood Vengeance. You can send them against most armies of enormous size and be confident they have a great chance of winning. Also, they cannot Preach, was that intended? 4) I find myself not recruiting anything but Waking Dreamers, Freaks, and Mad Prophets... they are so very powerful that nothing else much matters. Freaks though are much better balanced: their lack of head armor is a real equalizer. I love, LOVE playing this very overpowered nation. The sprites are very well done, the descriptions are SUPERB (there are some few typos in the nation description and elsewhere), just the prices for immortal vampire commanders (which are thematically recruitable everywhere) are quite a bit low and two or three are extremely overpowerful in every scenario. I did not find the crossbowmen at 15g/10r and 1 attack per round to be THAT gamebreaking. In fact, they were far more imminently killable than the vampires and I found to be eventually rather a waste of your extremely limited gold. Also, the Thrall Cavalry does not have any weapon even though their graphic shows them to carry spears or lances. |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
Ok I finished my game. In the last post, Maiandros = Malk Content. He ended up with 987 kills and kept pretty much all of Mighty Mictlan at bay until he finally died. By then I had researched Darkness and had Vampire Lords flying around with Skeleton Staves casting it. The Lupin Mamas were much too powerful to stop with their ally summon. I didn't even really need the Darkness.
If I were to play again, I would definitely take a major drain scale, either 2 or 3 points, and try for Order. I would also go with Sloth 3. Then I would go straight for Lupin Mamas, via Waking Dreamers and use ONLY Mad Prophets for expansion. A big Earth Bless would more or less make this nation almost totally unstoppable. UNITS: Thralls are fine, and thematic with very high morale, and low stats otherwise. They autosummon which is ok, especially since I didn't seem to get them except when really needed. It was fun to watch them die in droves as they raced forward to PD against enemies. Familiar Lanceriders are only using their Fist. I see they have a Glaive or something in the graphic... but still, ugh I hate overpriced cavalry. And that's being redundant: it seems to me that almost all cavalry is overpriced. The Familiar Crossbowmen surely need balancing. At 15g/10r, they have 12 precision with a 15 AP attack once per round at 40 range. Come on. This is pretty much the only unit I ever bought. Ghoul Assassins I would not purchase as I got 6 times the firepower with a like amount of Familiar Crossbowmen. The Familiar Swordsmen are overpriced as well, even with a good Patrol bonus. The fledgling Malkavians I would never buy for 80gp, they are much too fragile and this nation has so little gold up to midgame. Many times I would receive 5 random events, and all were bad: you cannot count on them for gold. I only used about 4-5 of the pretty decent Neonate Malkavians throughout the game. Love the Finglonger. Ghoul Guardians for PD are the MAN. At 55 gold I would not purchase them for my armies, they can easily come down in price to 30/40 but as PD they deflected most attacks leveled at my nation. No routing at 30 morale, 18 armor piercing attack (not magical? Hardly any of the weapons in this mod are, if any... I'm not sure if this was intended), with a 4 length weapon and 14 Attack. Always get 20 PD in any province you care at all about, because then the combination of these and Mad Prophets make that an extremely difficult province to take. Really the PD is extremely deadly for the price. Evocation mages did tend to make short work of it though and it would be slightly more balanced in MP. HEROES: The Malk Content is absolutely crazy. Probably the most powerful being I've ever seen in Dominions 3. Looked and acted like a Great Horror, with possibly stronger abilities. I got Rasputin showing up at my capitol: he had 6 Death, 8 Blood. Dear lord. At 50 Shattered Soul he actually had a streak of about 10 rounds in a row rampaging through my capitol... so he may be somewhat balanced, weird to say. He did come in handy to summon Wraith Lords later on... I got him near endgame. COMMANDERS: One Mad Prophet is usually enough to destroy almost any province of independents or SP enemy nation, with their ridiculous Blood Vengeance +4. If you are looking into balancing, I would not give them more than +2, and probably lower their Holy to 3. Mesmeric Manipulators are fun, I got one with Unequaled Obesity for much of the early game lol. Still, their 30 Shattered Soul means you have to use them extremely sparingly for their only unique function, which is Seduction/Assassination. Eventually she went haywire while in an enemy land and the PD killed her. Their 30 Magic Resistance comes in great handy for this job, they are awesome prophet killers. I can see myself using them in MP. The Freaks I would only use later on for Blood Hunting, as their 20 Shattered Soul is less than any of the others, plus their relative cheapness of 200g is encouraging. The other 3 commanders, The Awakend (is this meant to be spelled this way?), the Crazed Monster, and the Raving Lunatic are pretty much throwaways... I never hired one and there is no reason I can think of that I would want to. (Unless a Scythe has an area effect attack?) Still. Maybe some alternate magical paths would be nice here. Vohzd and Broodmothers... seem pretty much in line. Though at 30 and 60 bloodslaves, I'd just rather have Vampire Lords for 77 slaves. They totally have their use as tramplers though. The Swallow Whole ability... how is that supposed to work for Tramplers? It deals 2x to units smaller than it, but don't they just Trample those? SUMMONS: Wraiths are very powerful. The Shivering Shiver gives you 4-5 of them for a mere 10 death gems, and they are Ethereal and Immortal with high Attack and 2x armor negating, paralyzing attacks. Still you have 0 commanders that can actually summon them without boosters. Kind of weird not having any vampires with over 2 Death. I did not find Cappadocians anywhere. War Ghouls look great. Their powers seem about in line with other similar cost units. Throwing Body Ethereal on almost any mid-to-higher summon like this makes it a death machine. Big Bad Lupins are sooo powerful, WAY too powerful. For 20 astral gems at Conjuration 7 they can Summon Allies to get a Lupin. Lupins are how I won the game... they are extraordinarily powerful. Huge amounts of hps, huge ATK value, 3 attacks, 20 strength. Great protection, especially when berserking, large amounts of regneration, and even indy commanders can use them. Recuperation and Dark Power are just icing on the cake. Either the Lupin Mamas or the Lupins themselves need definite balancing. Trick Lupines summon at 15 astral for 4 units seems balanced. Lupin Mamas for 20 astral gems is easily the biggest giveaway in the mod. They should cost at least double, and that is being pretty generous. Vampire Elders at 4 astral/4 blood are almost laughable for 30 blood slaves. They cost 5 blood to get to, so good luck with that. Disappointing. They are totally useless as anything except Call Horror batteries, compared to the other commanders in this nation. That is to say, they are practically balanced. Zombus are right in line with their cost and power level. The only thing useful about them is that they cause Fear which is kind of thematic with the rest of the nation and has good synergy. Though I didn't use them, I can see how they may occasionally be useful. Fairy Beings at 6 astral and 6 flying movement are nice. But the fairies they autosummon do not seem to work... they always kill themselves with fairy dust and I don't think the Touch of Madness works. I set them to attack archers and they pretty much only ever killed themselves. The Sczhlata were fine at about 1 blood slave each. CONCLUSION: This nation is much too powerful for MP. It was, however, extraordinarily fun to play in just about maxed out SP. The descriptions were stupendous, but I don't know if you took those out of the books or if you made them yourself. If you did write those just for this mod, my god. The various armors and weapons were often hilarious, and always cool. This mod is HUGE. And the Malkavians play very differently than most any other mod nation I've tried. Sometimes the Shattered Soul gets in the way, but Immortal, Regenerating, Fearing, Life Draining, Multiple Attack units more than makes up for it. Very, very fun and extremely well done module, with glaring balance issues. Thank you for all the work that went in to this!!! Hope you find this useful and interesting. |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
I wonder if you could take the White Wolf concept of vampire Generation and put it into your next mod: For commanders you could recruit different archetype 6th Generation vampires which could then Summon Ally different lines of 7th Generation vampires which could then Summon Ally 8th Generation vampires...etc. This could be balanced by having more and more population and/or gold consumption as they increase in strength.
Perhaps at 9 Blood you could Ritual Summon one of three or four Antediluvians, a 3rd Generation vampire, the direct descendant of Malkav. Maybe they could eat other vampires, even commanders as fuel? Anyway, just a thought I had. Thanks again! |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
Forgot one:
Waking Dreamers. Oh my god. 2 gemsummons per turn, and the 3 most powerful magic paths. 21 base research... they are what powers this nation. If they were priced fairly, they'd be over 1000gp. |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
Thank you for your healthy critic. :-)
Quote:
Quote:
maybe i could increase their shattered soul stat? Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
i am good at that kind of thing. Quote:
also the riders have weapons, i checked that. they have a "riders lance". so, thanks for the critisism and try version 1.2.3. i hope i will have a new and more balanced version uploaded soon. by the way, i am german, so please show me where my spelling errors are. avarchillion |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
i tried a lot of differend armor and weapon classes with this unit but settled on this configuration. i could tweak the weapon though. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
the crazed monster has a incredibly powerful shapechange abillity that transforms him into a true killing machine, but again he is unpredictable. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
i will work on the balancing. ;-) Quote:
and yes i have been thinking about putting some other vampire clans into mods, but i haven´t found the time. avarchillion |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
Quote:
again, try the 1.2.3 version, some of the balancing issues are resolved, i hope. though thanks to your well written review i will go through my mod again and try to rebalance things. also again: i am german, live in germany and english is not my native language, so please send me all the spelling errors you find. avarchillion |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
1 Attachment(s)
here the newest version of my mod. version 1.3.1 makes these changes from 1.3:
--------------------------------------------------------------------- -- deformed plate mail now 21 port -- Ghoulsword now len 3 now dmg 15 -- Faeriedust now dmg 0 now #magic now #nostr -- Shivering Touch now #magic not armornegating ----Familiar Crossbowman now ap 13 ----Ghoul Guardian no reinvigoration any more ----Ghoul Assasin no reinvigoration any more ----Fledgeling Malkavian now 60 g price ----Neonate Malkavian now berserk 2 ----Wereform now berserk 4 now coldres -25 now darkpower 2 ----Tzimisce Broodmother now berserk 2 now darkpower 1 ----Tzimisce Vozhd now berserk 1 now darkpower 1 ----Tzimisce Szlachta now berserk 1 now darkpower 1 ----Lupin now regeneration 20 now not ambidextrous now berserk 2 now darkpower 1 ----Faerie Sprite now no illusion ----Zombu now not ambidextrous ----Wraith now not ambidextrous now not immortal ----War Ghoul now berserk 3 ---- Crazed Monster now not ambidextrous ----The Mad Prophet now hp 17 now not ambidextrous now darkpower 2 now bloodvengeance 1 ----Mesmeric Manipulator now darkpower 4 now berserk 1 ----The Freak now def 15 now bloodmagic 2 now darkpower 4 now berserk 4 ----Waking Dreamer now hp 15 now astralmagic 4 now nobadevents 10 now darkpower 1 now no illusion now not ambidextrous ----The Awakend now shatteredsoul 25 ---- Ghoul Sheriff now okundeadleader ---- Malkavian Elder now darkpower 4 now berserk 4 ---- Big Bad Lupin now hp 40 now prec 10 now regeneration 30 now noleader now darkpower 3 now fireres -100 no longer summon lupin (even though i might regret this) ;-) ---- Being from Faerieland now astralmagic 4 -- The Dionysian now darkpower 5 now awe 5 now astralmagic 6 now bloodmagic 4 now deathmagic 4 -- Rasputin no longer "touch of madness" now ambidextrous 2 now deathmagic 5 now berserk 4 -- Vasantasena now hp 25 now prot 3 now bloodmagic 5 now astralmagic 2 now priestmagic 1 now berserk 3 now darkpower 5 ---- Crazy Jane now att 10 now no illusion ---- Malk Content now no illusion now darkpower 4 now berserk 2 now ambidextrous 2 now no bloodvengeance ----The Elder now regeneration 25 now berserk 2 now darkpower 2 now fireres -75 now shockers -75 ----The Ninja-Wannabe now berserk 2 now darkpower 2 changed some spell descriptions and the number of bloodslaves required for some of the commander summoning spells also changed some spelling errors --------------------------------------------------------------------- i hope that this one is a bit more balanced. ;-) avarchillion |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
Wow, this mod is indeed a bit overpowered. 6 gems + 10 slaves and 10% blood magic bonus. And that is ignoring all the rest. Loads of AN or AP attacks, a crossbow shooter that shoots once each turn etc.
|
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
Quote:
if you still find this mod too easy to play, try playing against abysia or a nation with strong priests. all the vampires are undead and have a -100% resistance to fire (so they easily go up in flames). avarchillion |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
1 Attachment(s)
ok, another update:
------------------------- ----Familiar Lancerider has become cheaper :-) ----Familiar Swordsman has also become cheaper ----Malkavian Thrall also a bit cheaper now mindless now att 8 now def 7 now str 8 ----The Mad Prophet now def 5 now fireres -100 now shockers -100 now no fear now no darkpower now regeneration 20 now awe 1 ----Mesmeric Manipulator now regeneration 20 now awe 2 now holy again now hp 15 ----The Freak now def 13 now no incurunrest now regeneration 20 ----Waking Dreamer now no death gems ---- Big Bad Lupin can summon lupins again now regeneration 25 now fear 3 ----The Awakened now regeneration 20 changed the name…. now priestskill 1 now def 15 ---- Malkavian Elder now regeneration 25 now awe 1 ---- Being from Faerieland now awe 2 -- The Dionysian now awe 3 now hp 20 -- Rasputin now fear 5 -- Vasantasena now fear 1 now awe 1 now fireres -100 now shockers -100 now not ambidextrous ---- Crazy Jane now shockers -100 ---- Malk Content now stealthy 20 -- Trick Lupines now 20 gems -- Trick Lupin Mama now 60 gems -- Something out of Faerieland now 30 gems ------------------------------------------------- avarchillion |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
One small thing, I personally dislike summons that have a hidden gold cost.
Apart from that, I think you can win with only 2 provinces, one cap, and the other to dump all the unrest creating temple burning commanders in another province. Fort that one up. Get gold from events, and gather all the gems and slaves produced by the commanders :D. The freaks expand perfectly fine. Immortal, and berserk. Ideal to destroy anything that comes into your lands. |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
Bug: the wereform of the lunatic has only 100 years of max age. And isn't immortal, and is suddenly mindless. Might want to exualize all the different abilities it has.
|
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
Quote:
you seem to know a lot about modding. that is good to know as i do have some questions. 1. i am trying to get the fairydust weapon to work, but it just doesn´t.... example: -- Faeriedust #newweapon 668 #name "Faeriedust" #dmg 1 #att 5 #def 0 #nratt 1 #rcost 1 #aoe 1 #magic #nostr #len 4 #secondaryeffect 88 #secondaryeffectalways 387 #explspr 10001 #end that should create a close combat weapon that is considered magic, should, on hit, cause unconsciousness and should induce sleep to anyone in the area. well, it doesn´t do anything but a little bit of damage....... what have i done wrong here? 2. how do i give unique, definit names to my heroes? 3. why is the space for text (unit description etc.) always so small? 4. how do i get the wereform only to come out when the raving lunatic is actually hit? that was my original idea and i am not happy with how it works at the moment. Quote:
anyhow thanks for the critisism. :-) avarchillion |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
well, i have made the wereform less mindless, immortal and more youthful. :-)
just download the 1.3.2 version at the begining of this post. avarchillion |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
Your fairy dust weapon is way too complex for what you want it to do...you could just plain have this:
#newweapon 668 #name "Faeriedust" #dmg 110 #att 5 #def 0 #nratt 1 #rcost 1 #aoe 1 #magic #dt_stun #nostr #len 4 #secondaryeffectalways 387 #explspr 10001 #end However, that's the most ridiculously overpowered weapon in the world--fatigue out aoe-1 automatically? Nothing should get that. |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
Quote:
avarchillion |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
Hidden gold cost is because the summons are normal units that still have gold upkeep costs (As they are the same units as the normal recruits they still increase your upkeep by their normal gold cost). (Not that bad in this case, as the rest is a bit op).
|
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
I will try your new version since the first one was so enjoyable... I hope they are less god-like this time around! I have been using them as one of my overpowered opponents in SP. The others are mostly by Amos, to give you an idea of how strong yours is!
|
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
1 Attachment(s)
ok another update: version 1.4
i have tweaked all the vampires, took away some of their weapons, tweaked the lupins and managed to get some of the weapons (faeriedust; thanks to kianduatha; and others to work). rather substantial tweak and balancing update. for instance i managed to get malk content killed in game against some independent defenders. :-) avarchillion |
Re: MA - The House of Malkav -The Malkavians
I played a game of 1.3.2 and the vast sweep of vampire abilities and powers downward seemed like it was so much more balanced.
-The Horsemen don't (didn't) have any Ambidexterity so their effective Attack with the two long range weapons is very low. I forgot the rest, it was a few days ago but I will update here as I remember, playing v. 1.4. |
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 07:54 PM. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2025, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©1999 - 2025, Shrapnel Games, Inc. - All Rights Reserved.